Dutzow Shop Owner Returns $300 Cash Found at Auction

No one can accuse Tammy or Ted Beede, owners of Two Friends Consignment in Dutzow, of being dishonest.

Back in December 2011, Ted Beede made headlines when he returned $4,000 cash that he found stuffed inside a wing chair that he had purchased at a local auction.

Just two weeks ago, Tammy Beede did much the same thing when she returned $300 cash that she found lying on the ground near the bar at an auction led by Bob Andel of Robertsville Auction.

It was Monday night, April 8, and Tammy Beede said she had gone to the bar area to purchase an iced tea when she thought she dropped something from her purse. She bent down, picked it up and stuffed it into her purse.

Later when she saw that it was three $100 bills, she realized pretty quickly it didn’t belong to her, so she took it straight to the cashier expecting someone would come looking for it.

She was right. The next day Andel received a call from Terry at Four Seasons Florist in Downtown Washington, another regular auction-goer, to say he had lost “a wad of money,” had anyone turned it in?

“We all know each other at these auctions,” Terry told The Missourian. “We all go to these over and over — I know half of the people at these auctions personally.

“So I knew if it was an auction person who found it, they would turn it in.”

Jensen could verify the amount of cash and number of bills, so Andel returned the found cash to him.

Beede said she never once considered keeping the cash as a lucky find.

“I believe you should do good things,” she said. “I believe in paying it forward.

“I was raised to do the Christian thing, and in no way could I have kept that money and felt good about it.

“It wasn’t my money,” she said flatly.

Andel said it makes him feel good too to have these kinds of people as customers.

“It’s one of those nice things you like hearing about,” he said.

Terry, too, said it reaffirms his faith in people, but that he always knew auction-goers are a pretty honest bunch.